Because 2 days is never enough.

I’ve written about my Grandmother, Maxine Broad, on this blog before, and in the years since I wrote about her, she passed away, just shy of her 92nd birthday.

I’ve often thought of how much she knew, family stories and recipes and sewing tricks.  She was a exceedingly practical person and it makes me sad to think that over 90 years of that knowledge is no longer here.  And while this is just a part of life that we all have to accept, the care package my mom sent me this week bridged that gap a little bit.

Grandma was a passionate sewer.  Even though it was a necessity, it was also a pleasure to her. The last time I saw her, she told me that the neighbors were always wondering why her light was on all into the night (as she burned the midnight oil at her machine).   The package my mom sent was a treasure trove of old patterns for children’s clothes, quilt squares she sewed but never made into a quilt, quilt patterns and appliques, and lots of notes and drawings in her handwriting.   Some of these date back to the 1930’s.

Having these things makes me feel like a piece of her is still with me and like maybe I’m carrying on some of her passions in my own life.

My darling husband got me a few awesome Christmas gifts and they all demonstrated his good taste and how well he knows me. My favorite gift, however, didn’t turn up until after the holidays when we returned from California.  I was fairly grumpy about returning to the wintery wilds of New York, so the delayed delivery was actual kind of perfect.

Thanks to Karl and Ebay, I’m now the proud owner of some charming vintage sewing supplies. Behold:

I am madly in love with the spool rack, particularly.

I fell in love with the line of Echino oilcloth that Purl had on offer and bought up a bunch without much of a plan. I knew I wanted to make a bag and  the more I thought about this shirt, the more I realized I could apply the basic pattern to make a cute handbag. I did a little math and cut out some geometric shapes for a pattern and whipped up this little beauty.

It’s lined and has a pocket and really is the perfect size for an everyday bag.  The pockets aren’t really sized right, so it has become a bit of a dumping ground, but otherwise I love everything about it.

I even made one for Mindy as a Christmas gift, but I forgot to take a photo.

It might, therefore, appear that this is an all around happy story, but unfortunately, there is catch.  I found the oil cloth  a little tricky to sew with. Karl helped me by rigging a piece of tape under the presser foot for some traction on the slippy material, but I still needed to go buy some heavy duty thread.  It may well have been the thread, but now my sewing machine is off.  It feels impossible to take it to get a tune up here in New York.  I’ll do it eventually, but for now, I have just reverted to knitting for a while.